Shannon Yarbrough

Although it’s already close to being more like summer here, I took the opportunity today to get outside and snap a few photos of the plants and flowers we planted this past weekend…

The birdfeeder is new this year. And the purple flower is something that came back from last year, but we have no idea what it is. It’s the first to have bloomed this year.

The flowerbed in the far back of the yard. The hostas are all from last year. The rest is all new. The statue was found next to the dumpster at our old apartment, and was a decoration in our living room for about a year. J didn’t want to bring it with us but it found its way over to the new house anyway!

There will hopefully be sunflowers in the whiskey barrel soon. The green and brown pots are new, as are the flowers inside them. The sad little pot was a fern that didn’t quite make it on the window sill back during winter. I thought the sunshine might help since it seems to be hanging on.

The hanging basket is new. The wind chime is too, a gift from my brother and his wife at Xmas last year.

No garden in the ground this year. Two pepper plants and a tomato plant here. I’m hoping for wild flowers in the left pot which I can transplant to the yard.

Here’s the before and after pics again of our project from this past weekend…

BEFORE

AFTER…

I think J and I did one hell of a job, don’t you? Now all we need is more plants!

Last night here in St. Louis, a man went to a dumpster to drop off his lawn clippings.  He thought he heard a baby crying inside and went for help.  After he and some others dug through the waste, they found a newborn baby inside with the umbilical cord still attached.  This both angers and saddens me.

I don’t know what goes through a person’s mind to give birth to a child and then put it in a dumpster, or why does a teenager go into a bathroom at prom and do the same thing?  You carried the child for nine months.  You just went through labor.  Now, you just want to leave it somewhere like forgetting your purse?

In some states, there are places where you can actually drop off your unwanted baby safely and anonymously, and the child will at least be cared for.  But for those of you who don’t have that option, find my house and leave the baby at the back door.  We live in a country where orphanages are crowded, the fostering system is a joke, and adoption is too expensive.  We take kids from their battered homes but put them right back in them if the real parents come crying and want their kids back.  And the moral majority of America thinks I’m not fit to raise and love a child because I live with another man.

Excuse me, lady, don’t leave that baby in the trash.  How dare you!  Give it to me.  Give the baby a chance.  Give it a home.  And don’t you dare come calling when the baby is out of diapers and in school, and now you want him back so you can draw a check!  You didn’t want him before!